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Watch the draw! Watch the screen! It's second and long. His teammate, the ever-vocal strongside linebacker Mike Hull, is yelling the words. But Nyeem Wartman already knows.

He's already lurking.

All the eyes inside of Beaver Stadium at this moment are on the quarterback, a junior college transfer named Tyler Ferguson who traveled all the way from central California to play football in the swirling winds and April snow flurries at Beaver Stadium. The 2013 Blue-White Game, those eyes knew, was about the quarterbacks.

But Penn State, first and foremost, is Linebacker U. And as Ferguson dropped back, and kept dropping, and finally lofted a pass toward backup running back Deron Thompson, the eyes shifted.

Like a pick-up truck, Wartman powered his way toward the ball. He dropped Thompson with a hit that drew a gasp from the crowd, and Thompson dropped the ball.

He had just one tackle Saturday. But he had the game's biggest hit.

This is the story of that hit, which really is the entire story of Nyeem Wartman's return to the football field this spring.

It's a story of instincts. It's a story of aggression. It's a story of preparation. Most of all, it's the story of potential.

"Our coaches do a great job of teaching the situations," the Valley View graduate said. "That screen, for example. They teach you on second and long, look draw, look screen. It's not really that I'm instinctive. It's that you have to know your situations."

Respectfully, just about everyone else who plays alongside him and coaches him disagree.

For the first time certainly in more than a decade, the linebacking corps at Penn State is a bit of a question mark. Michael Mauti and Gerald Hodges are gone, leaving the coaching staff to replace more than 200 tackles.

Middle linebacker Glenn Carson remains a reliable link to the past, and Mike Hull might be the odds-on favorite to lead the team in tackles this season. But make no mistake, the future of Penn State's linebacking corps is the dynamic, power-punching Wartman.

"He's a good player," defensive coordinator John Butler said. "He's very instinctual. He loves football. I think he's a guy that prepares, and he needs to just keep developing. He's one of the guys we're going to count on, but he needs a lot of reps and a lot of seasoning and just more battle time."

It's not that the coaching staff didn't try to get it for him.

He opened the season as Carson's backup at middle linebacker in 2012, but that campaign ended after just a game and a half. Covering a kick against Virginia in the second week of the season, Wartman sprained his knee.

And that was that for his true freshman season. No pomp. No circumstance.

Plenty of frustration.

"After I hurt my knee, there was a little depression sort of last season," Wartman conceded. "It's real scary, because you don't know how you're going to come back. But I looked at it in the sense that it was a mental thing. I felt comfortable and everything with my knee. I just went into it thinking I have to prove myself. People were talking about me. But I hadn't done anything to prove it to myself."

Wartman dressed for the final handful of games late last season, but he knew what everyone else figured: He was not going to play unless the Nittany Lions got down to two linebackers, and after injuries to Mauti and Ben Kline, they almost did.

But as he watched, he prepared. He studied how the prolific Mauti went about his business, how he studied game plans and how he approached his assignment on every play. He took the opportunity to get stronger in the weight room, because while he admits he was a strong enough player to be a decent player last year he wasn't strong enough to be a consistent one.

"It was kind of nice just to sit there and watch," Wartman said.

That's the kind of thing Butler talks about, that he wants in all of his linebackers.

Potentially, Wartman has the speed to be a dominant pass rusher and solid in coverage. Potentially, he has the instincts to beat ball-carriers to a spot. Potentially, he can be the next feared linebacker at a school that always seems to produce them.

But Wartman knows the value of learning. He knows that preparation is the key to success. He knows what happened to him last season was probably the best thing for him.

Scariest thing is, he knows he wants more.

"I'm far from where I could be," he said.

Many more hits like the one he put on Deron Thompson on Saturday, and his opponents are going to wonder how far Wartman can actually go.

DONNIE COLLINS covers Penn State football for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com, read his blog at http://blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/pennstate/, or follow him on Twitter @psubst

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